Foodmaker has discontinued the popular condiment

If you think the best Thanksgiving pairing is Detroit versus Green Bay, you clearly don't make cheese balls.

A staple at many a holiday feast, the vaunted cheese ball will be missing a key ingredient this year after Kraft discontinued its Roka Blue cheese spread.

Corporate bigwigs versus Thanksgiving tradition: Oh, it's on.

"Unfortunately, there just wasn't enough demand for it in the marketplace to support our continuing to produce it," Angela Wiggins, Kraft's senior manager for corporate affairs, said. Kraft stopped producing Roka Blue Spread last December.

The decision was met with outrage -- six pages of outrage, to be exact, posted to Kraft's online recipe board (recipe-board.kraftfoods.com) this week, as cooks noticed the product's absence. Capital letters and exclamation points abound, as do such phrases as "family tradition," "long-standing," "four generations" and "81-year-old mother."

"I am 50 something and my grandmother started a cheese ball recipe back before I was born! It has been a family tradition as long!!!" wrote one poster. "Now, sadly, the tradition is coming to an end because of some snotty-nose executive that thinks it's all about the numbers."

As a substitute, Wiggins said Kraft recommends mixing Philadelphia cream cheese with Athenos crumbled blue cheese to replicate the Roka. Something tells us that won't fly.

But take heart, Roka lovers: Wiggins said the company may reintroduce it.

"We've really taken note of the passion consumers have for Roka Blue," she said. "While we can't make any promises at this point, we will take a look at bringing back Roka Blue as a seasonal product in the future."